I'm not usually big on government regulation, but I'm down with making it against the law to crank up the volume of commercials on television relative to the volume levels of the actual shows. A new bill approved by The House Communications Subcommittee attempts to do just that.

Eshoo said the bill premise was simple: "To make the volume of commercials and programming uniform so that spikes in volume do not affect the consumer's ability to control sound." Eshoo said that ad volume spikes had "endangered hearing for decades." She also said legislative spouses had been urging their husbands or wives to sign on as co-sponsors. "I think they are all tired of getting blasted out of their easy chairs or off their exercise equipment due to these ridiculously loud commercials."

As reported by B&C, the bill was modified from the original form to give the broadcast and cable industry more time to implement the technology and to make an industry-backed engineering standard the rules for the road.

Of course, because it's politics, it's not as simple as "hey, cut that out!" and there are all kinds of details about the whens and hows of the bill, which still needs to get through congress before becoming a law. For the details see John Eggerton's full story on B&C.